> On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 9:02 AM, Marco van de Voort <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > A solution for unicode should be for everything, not just for UIs and > > filenames. I should be able to carry data within it also, because otherwise > > we are having this dicussion next week again if Joost needs unicode for DB > > related issues etc. > > Ok, but how do you know that everyone wants to store data in the > "system" encoding?
Well, euh, the main reason is that euh, most programs and data on the system uses the system encoding? > What if I want to store data using ansistring in Windows because my > file is UTF-8? Then I'd say you convert. But that is the point. The need for conversion should be the exception (different from the default system encoding), not the rule. > In my system I propose that simply a TWideStringList be implemented, > so both ways of storing data are available everwhere. But I don't have an utf-8 type in your system to operate on. > > How? I can't express the foreign encoding because I have no type for it. I > > only have ansistring that can mean pretty much everything, and that > > constitutes no compiletime safety. > > ansistrings don't mean everything. They mean either ISO or utf-8. Yes. Which is why there is a need for a separate UTF-8 type as well as the UTF-16 type. So that the compiler knows for sure something is UTF-8, and can insert conversions. And can error/hint/warn you to insert manual conversions if you assign an unicode type (either) to an ansistring. > >> I bet you would convert automatically from whatever to ansi when going > >> to a ansistring, but Lazarus uses utf-8 in ansistrings. > > > > But that is lazarus specific. > > Lazarus is by far the largest project using Free Pascal? FPC itself? Anyway that doesn't matter. A solution for FPC must be carried broadly, not just by lazarus. > > Because the decision to put utf-8 in ansistrings is too fundamentally flawed > > to implement such a thing, since it perfectly legal if an ansistring does > > not contain utf8 > > We concluded that utf-8 in ansistrings is a very convenient solution > for us which works very well today. It provided a smooth migration > path and keeps the vast majority of code working. Because you had no choice. _______________________________________________ fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal
